Time Flying (16 page)

“What are you doing here?” I asked, meaning Pensacola, not the Officer's Mess.

“They brought in some doctors to listen to me talk about brain trauma, early treatment, blah, blah, blah. They have made the grievous error of believing I know something about all that stuff.” The only time I Walt Steinberg fudged the truth was when talking about himself, but never to appear better or smarter, only more normal. Without this character flaw, I would probably have been talking with an officer with Admiral stars on his shoulders, rather than the eagles of a Full Commander. 

“What are you doing here?” He asked. “Are you stationed in Pensacola now?”

“Hell, no, I’m just here for the shirtless volleyball,” I answered, straight-faced, bringing a puzzled look from Walter lasting about a second, before he got the
Top Gun
reference and threw his head back and laughed. Humor was the only area in which I could stay a half-step ahead of Walter Steinberg. In truth, I always believed he evaluated a joke he heard for humor, evaluated how strong a response the humorous anecdote required, and then executed his response. Ever since high school, he was the brainiest guy I'd ever known. One of the only Jewish kids in a midwestern high school, he learned to evaluate humor in the way he did, because so many jokes had been at his expense.

“Hey, join us. You got a few minutes?” I asked, hopeful.

“Sure!” Walter answered, pointing the way to our table, where Pat waited.

“Commander Walter Steinberg,” I said, introducing a good friend from the past to my best friend today, “Lieutenant Pat Maney, my parter. He turns the airplane on and I tell him where to go.”

“HA!” Pat answered, standing and shaking Walter's hand, our bit well-worn. “He's 'Goose,’ and I'm Tom Cruise, only taller.”

“Not by much,” I added. All this earned an easy laugh from Walter.

Nodding at Steinberg's medical badge, Pat said, “So, I take it you're the Doctor who forged this guy's psych evaluation so he could get in the Navy?”

This put a perplexed expression on Walter’s face, erased by Pat's quick “Kidding.”

“Oh!” Another big laugh as we all sat down.

“So, what YOU think about Saddam, Commander?” Pat asked Walter, saying the dictator’s name the way President Bush did, emphasizing the first syllable, “SADdam”. Some language experts said Bush said it in this way, since the word  translated to “shoeshine boy” in the form of Aramaic the Iraqis spoke.

Steinberg shrugged, considering Pat’s question. “It's easy to say he's insane, but when you consider the environment in which he grew up, what the social structures in the Middle East are like, it's easy to understand how men like him are created. Culturally, that part of the world tends to line up behind dictators easily, and there’s never a shortage of thugs interested in leading the parade. Government in those countries often becomes a kind of mafia with uniforms. Expecting our brand of democracy to simply take hold in a place like that is naive, but I believe we have to try.”

Pat and I both nodded, Walter’s eyes moving between us for a couple seconds before he asked, “What do you think of him?” Steinberg leaned forward, interested in hearing our thoughts.

“I think he’s a fucking crazy, insane maniac,” Pat answered.

I chuckled under my breath, watching Walter, eager to hear Pat’s reasoned response, parse his overly simplistic opinion. As the seconds ticked off, he realized Pat had pretty much delivered his complete opinion. 

Walter waited a few more seconds out of courtesy, and as Pat took a drink of his soda, continued. “I served with a doctor a few years ago who had been part of a liaison mission to Iraq when Saddam was a friend of ours, during the Iran-Iraq war. He said his time there  was like being in an alternate universe, where a time traveler had gathered up a bunch of technology and gone back in time, so you had crowds publicly humiliating women for letting too much of their face show, while people shot video of the scene with their camcorders.  He said the experience was…a disjointed one.”

Time traveler
. Hearing those words from Steinberg cause a chill to hit my gut, and I looked closely at Walter. Was he delivering a message? Did he know something? He seemed oblivious to my sudden spike in attention, and he continued. “The next few months should prove quite interesting.”

For me, the next few months will certainly be interesting, and for the second time.

The topic turned to internal Navy stuff, postings, friends and acquaintances we all had in common. Put two Navy people together and before long, they are traveling the “find the friends in common” road, and it never fails to amaze no matter how long you’ve served, just how small the service is. Fortunately, there were no more references to time travel, however, and I began to relax a little, still thinking about it.

As it turned out Walter had orders sending him to Whidbey Island, booked on the same flight Pat and I the next day. The Naval Air Station at Whidbey was the next stop for his little head trauma dog and pony show, since most of the aircrews stationed at Whidbey were scheduled for the coming deployment, and they expected more than the usual supply of training accidents in the next few months, I guess. The flight the next day was an all-day Friday affair, so Walter didn't have anything on his schedule until Monday afternoon. I talked him into a barbecue on Saturday at the house. Sensitive about intruding on a reunited family post-deployment, he and graciously refused the offer to stay at our place, insisting the BOQ (Bachelor Officers Quarters) on base were among the best, and he'd been wanting to hike Deception Pass State Park.

After a few more minutes we parted, planning to meet again on the plane to Whidbey the next day. It felt good connecting with an old friend, even if I still had a little wariness about the circumstances and timing. I shrugged the worry off, though, and realized I wanted to have some time with Walter this weekend to discuss my “problem.”l. There was a good chance my experience was neurological, and I believed I could trust him with at least part of my situation without getting my flight privileges yanked in the process.

SEVEN

Altitude

Autumn, 1990 on Whidbey Island proved to be beautiful, with unseasonably warm and dry conditions, perfect for both flying and family life. Walter Steinberg, Pat’s family, Amanda, my boys and I got to enjoy a late season barbecue the first week of October. I sat with a long neck in my hand, next to Walter on the picnic table in my backyard watching Pat handle the burgers and steaks, with occasional helpful advice from Amanda. Aaron and Michael were playing with the Maney kids, Jerry and Allison, 8 year old twins who were miniature versions of Pat and Candice. Walter clearly loved this.

“Oh no, I am way too busy for a family right now,” he replied when Amanda had asked about his love life. Only when driving home from the base after we landed and telling my wife who was coming over next day, did it occur to me while she knew Walter from High School, too. Two lives we have, the Navy and the one before the Navy, and it is odd when they intersect.

When Walter explained about being too busy right now, Amanda wanted to scrunch up her eyes, making the worry lines on her forehead pop out, and say, “Well, when won't you be too busy?” She didn’t say it, but trust me, she was thinking it. But, ever the gracious hostess, Amanda nodded in a non-enthusiastic way, smiled, and said nothing. She excused herself and went back to harass Pat some more about his grilling.

Walter turned to me and said, “This is super, Rich. You've got a such wonderful family.” Still smiling and flicking his eyebrows up, he added, “You and Amanda Tully. Nicely done, my friend.”

Walt had no idea. I’d done well twice. Neither life was without challenges, drama, fights, heartbreaks and minor miseries, but in both of my lives, the one I'd been ripped out of by either some force of nature, or else my own mind, and this one, the good far outweighed the bad, and I was happy. Desperate at times, but happy.

I nodded at the beer in Walter's hand. “You need another one?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“Walter, I'm glad I ran into you in Pensacola. I have…uh...something to ask your opinion about.”

He tilted his head to the right, his smile gone. “Sure, the least I can do to repay this wonderful afternoon. What can I help you with?” He took a pull from his beer, waiting for me to tell him.

“Now, let's talk hypothetically, OK?” I said, looking directly at him.

“Of course.” Walter shrugged in acceptance of the terms.

“Have you had any experience with a patient who…was…displaced for want of a better word?” He listened intently, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Not sure…what you mean,” Walter replied after a couple seconds. I realized I hadn't really thought through how to ask him about this.

I took a deep breath. Pat still cooked, Amanda stood 10 yards away, deep in conversation with Candice, watching the kids running around. “Let's say a guy...Or a woman...Had an experience that seemed completely real, but couldn't possibly be. Not a hallucination or anything, they simply found themselves...uh...somewhere else, and went on living in that situation.” 

“That couldn’t possibly be real,” Walter continued my sentence, teasing.

I shook my head in frustration. Trying to explain a little bit of something completely impossible without sounding crazy.

Walter sensed my frustration and smiled. “Rich, how long have we known each other?”

I shrugged. “7th or 8th grade. 20 years?”

“We met on our first day of 8th grade,” Walter replied. “You were my first friend in Indiana. My family had moved to Indy from Queens, and Brett McCready, the redneck in his International Harvester hat, was about to kick my 'Jew ass' as he so eloquently said, until you stepped in and stopped him.”

I smiled at a memory I hadn’t accessed for 20 years. Wait, make that 50 years. Walter had been so skinny, and so obviously not from Central Indiana. “Brett McCready had no idea what a Jew was,” I said.

“True, but it didn't stop him from trying to kick the living shit out of me,” Walter replied. “Though I suppose the whole situation could have been avoided if I hadn’t reminded him that Jesus was a Jew,” Walter said, chuckling himself at the memory. “I think I confused him.”

The story made me laugh, and when I stopped, Walter continued. “So Rich, we go back a long way, and I owe you my life...Or at least my 'Jew ass.' Nothing you will tell me will ever go any further.”

I nodded, and seeing Pat begin to move hamburgers and hot dogs off the fire, said, “After we eat, I'll tell you everything.”

Pat, on cue, announced to the world. “Chow is ON, shipmates!” prompting a cheer from the kids.

Walter nodded, patted me on the knee and said, “I think I will have another beer.”

“Me too,” I said.

Later, in my den, Walter and I talked. Pat, Candice and the twins had gone home, and Amanda had some things to do in her office. The boys went with her, since her dance studio sat next to a park with a basketball court, and since Michael and Aaron both carried two sets of Hoosier genes, they loved the game. Walter and I had some time to talk, privately.

I told him the whole story, counting on his promise of anonymity, because a word from him up the chain of command and my flying career would end.

“I can't say I remember any change in your behavior at all, that year,” he replied when I asked if he noticed anything odd in my first days “back” in 1976. “If I remember correctly, you had a rough time with your leg after your accident. It was pretty bad, right?”

“Yea, it was. Broken in three places,” I said.

Walter nodded, thinking. “You recovered. Exercised. You were extremely focused, if I remember. Not much time for anything else,” he said, remembering out loud. He shrugged. “I can't say I remember any 'discontinuity' in the Rich I knew.”

It was my turn to nod, and after a few seconds, I said, “The ‘me’ here in the spring of 1976 was 47 years old, and so I have two sets of memories from then until…well, now,” I continued. “The first set of memories weren’t as productive. I didn’t do so well, ended up using a lot of pain medication.”

I had been looking out the darkened window telling this part of the story, but turned to meet Walter’s eyes and confessed, embarrassed, “I got hooked on the stuff.” Seeing my friend’s sympathetic expression, I looked around the room, gesturing with my arms and said, “I didn't do any of this. No Navy. I never played basketball again.”

Our eyes were locked for a few seconds, until I said, “And no Amanda. It was all different.” I shrugged my shoulders, turning palms up as if to say that's the whole story.

At this point, I'm a little ashamed to admit, I was concerned Walter would get up, go back to the BOQ and call in a report suspending my flight status. Sure, we had been friends for a long time, but he would probably have been right, after all I'd told him, to tell the Navy “Do NOT, under any circumstances, let this lunatic EVER fly in our jets and drop our bombs again.”

My worries were without foundation. Walter sat, looking out the window thinking. After a couple minutes, he relaxed a little, sat back in his chair and said, “There’s a fine line, sometimes, between Psychology and Neurology. I'm not a shrink. I'm a Neurologist. Diagnostically, sometimes it’s hard to tell which specialty is needed. Which is why a Neuro, if he's smart, works hard at deception detection, at observing a patient to try and learn if he's telling the truth as he knows it. If you get good at it, you can tell if someone's lying with greater reliability than a lie detector.”

Walter paused for a moment, letting his words sink in.

“I believe you're telling me the truth, Rich. Now the question is, is this neurological or psychological?”

“Well, I can tell you what's going to happen over the next few months,” I said.

Walter laughed, “Everybody knows what's going to happen over the next few months, Rich!”

I joined him in his laughter. “True,” I replied. “But I’ll go one step further. We'll kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait, but we won't drive all the way to Baghdad, and Bush will catch a lot of shit for that decision. He'll serve one term, and Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas will be the next President. He'll do two terms, and then Bush's son George gets elected, goes back and finishes the job.”